Building a Viking Empire with Modern Industry-Chapter 170: Shields, spears, and banners

During the past few days, Ragnar’s hostile takeover of Nottinghamshire had been reduced to a slow, methodical crawl.

With the constant need to send out Audit Teams on a series of risk assessment missions for West Saxon saboteurs, the Directorate host was forced to march through the coalfields at a pace that was frankly inefficient.

Because of this, Ragnar had become impatient.

His quarterly projections were slipping, and it was only due to the constant advice of General Bjorn that he did not make a rash action like marching through the smoky valleys undeterred by the threat of ambush... which would surely result in more asset depreciation than it was worth.

Thus, at the moment, Ragnar found himself within the Mobile Command Center that his army had established near a defunct rail spur, with a significant degree of downtime.

His corporate hierarchy was so well implemented that he honestly did not have much to do on the campaign as CEO, as the management tier was more than capable of fulfilling their daily duties without his micromanagement.

Ragnar found himself tinkering with a pocket watch for entertainment, and as such, was in the middle of calibrating a gear mechanism which greatly resembled the internal workings of the new Steam Whistle.

Though his watchmaking skills were lacking compared to Elfwynn, the crude mechanism kept time with surprising accuracy.

It was not a bad prototype, considering his relatively poor dexterity with small parts.

It was at this moment that the heavy canvas flaps to his command tent parted, and General Bjorn forcefully entered.

Seeing that his Director was in the process of fixing a watch instead of reviewing the casualty reports, Bjorn wisely chose not to question it, and instead reported the news that he had received.

"Director, I have a memo to file."

Ragnar did not bother placing down the watch mechanism that he was still in the process of calibrating. Instead, he continued to do so while listening to Bjorn’s words.

As such, he nonchalantly approved Bjorn’s request to inform him of the matters at hand.

Seeing that Ragnar was more interested in his timepiece than the important news he had to share, Bjorn quickly sighed before starting the report with a phrase that would be sure to grab Ragnar’s attention.

"We have gained some actionable intelligence from the exit interviews!"

Hearing this news, Ragnar’s monocle glinted, and he immediately stopped his activity.

Instead, he placed the half-finished watch on the desk next to him and the tweezers with it before shifting his full attention to Bjorn, where he responded to this news with a great deal of corporate curiosity.

"Elaborate..."

Seeing that Ragnar’s interest was fully captured, Bjorn smirked before fulfilling the rest of his report; as such, he placed the map in his hand down onto a nearby drafting table in Ragnar’s tent and spread it out where it displayed several red markings on specific positions in the nearby slag heaps and forests.

"These are the locations of the West Saxon sabotage cells within the nearby area; our ’HR Specialists’ have determined the information to be accurate!"

Hearing this news, Ragnar quickly got up from his leather chair, where he proceeded to the table where the map was displayed and carefully observed it, with a broad, predatory smile on his face.

Now that he knew the competition’s positions, he could easily restructure them with the overwhelming firepower of his 140 Steam Cannons.

After seeing this information, Ragnar quickly gave his orders to Bjorn for the army to fulfill. He pointed at the different locations with his cane and ordered a bold liquidation.

"Move an Artillery Brigade to each of these positions, supported by a Heavy Infantry Battalion. I want these luddite skirmishers sufficiently bombarded before we surround them with our Crossbowmen!

Only after they have suffered the barrage of our high-explosive shells will our infantry move in and finalize their termination!"

Hearing Ragnar’s orders, Bjorn quickly saluted the man by pounding his breastplate with his fist.

"Efficiency is Victory!"

Afterward, the General left the tent and quickly put the orders into action.

Though Ragnar wanted to participate in the operation, he was forced to stay behind to balance the books.

As such, he sighed heavily before pouring himself a cup of black coffee. Where he quickly drained its contents.

As for the operation itself, the Directorate forces who were ordered to partake in the attack quickly moved off to their positions; the amount of firepower

Ragnar had ordered to bring down upon the skirmishers was overkill.

Yet, Ragnar wanted to put the fear of the Market in the West Saxons, and what better way than to liquidate their forces which lay in wait for his supply chain.

As such, the locations where the skirmishers hid were quickly surrounded by Ragnar’s artillery and infantry.

At all four areas, there were hundreds if not thousands of West Saxon ambushers gathered, hiding in the smog and waiting for the main Directorate force to pass by so that they could converge on the logistics train and disrupt the Q3 earnings.

Unfortunately for the West Saxons, they had been betrayed by their former colleagues, and thus without realizing it, quickly came under the assault of artillery, whose hisses echoed in the air like the breath of an industrial dragon.

The explosive shells landed upon the position of the West Saxon skirmishers, exploding upon impact and sending shrapnel and coal dust throughout the air.

The 12-pound Iron Shell, which was utilized as the host of the explosive charge, contained enough shrapnel to gravely wound or even kill those unfortunate enough to be caught in its range.

The shards of cast iron were flying out at such speed that they were fully capable of penetrating through the less solid armor like leather and mail.

As for the few Thanes in heavy mail, it was partially resistant to the shrapnel. However, the explosive blast itself was more than capable of liquidating the men caught within its lethal range.

Most of the huscarls of the West Saxon army were not fully equipped in plate armor... maybe a helmet and a mail shirt, but there were plenty of gaps in their armor, and as such, the shrapnel easily pierced through those gaps and into the flesh of the men unfortunate enough to be hit by it.

The bombardment did not stop with a single volley.

The men who had survived the initial onslaught only had roughly half a minute to get their thoughts in order before another volley was fired from the 18 steam guns present at each location.

The hiss of steam filled the air, and what immediately followed was depreciation and ruin.

The West Saxon warriors wept and wailed as their comrades were blasted apart, and the artillery fire sufficiently injured them.

Yet despite their attempts to rally forth and advance on their attackers, 18 shells repeatedly bombarded their location every 30 seconds like clockwork.

Corpses littered the forests and slag heaps where the West Saxons had gathered, blood pooled into the mud, and broken axes were scattered across the area.

The equipment the West Saxons carried was scrapped and hewn across the land, along with the bodies that wielded it.

Shields, spears, and banners were cast aside and mangled by the explosive blast of the shells which bombarded the area.

It was as if the Industrial Revolution itself had descended on the land to punish the backwardness of the feudal system.

Unfortunately, for those lucky enough to escape the bombardment, they quickly realized they were surrounded as they walked right into the Repeating Crossbow fire of the Directorate forces.

Their brief moment of hope for survival was met with a steel bolt piercing through their mail and leaving a massive hole in their contracts.

With the first wave of West Saxons utterly decimated by the artillery bombardment, and the second pinned down by the crossbows, the Directorate troops rapidly reloaded their weapons as more men desperately tried to escape the encirclement.

However, their fates were sealed the moment their locations were revealed to Ragnar’s auditors.

Though the artillery bombardment continued to focus on the center of the encirclement, blasting apart those unfortunate enough to get caught within its shockwave, the majority of the West Saxons had now rushed out of the forests and hills they occupied and into the Directorate infantry, who were well prepared for their attacks.

In doing so, another volley was fired from the crossbowmen, which shredded the bodies of the huscarls, equipped chiefly with melee weapons.

The few archers in their ranks who were still alive had opted to stay from afar and launch their arrows into the Directorate forces.

However, it was far less effective than they had imagined.

Only a tiny number of contractors were killed and wounded by the arrows that fell in their direction.

The rest unleashed their Pikes on the huscarls, who rushed to their positions in a desperate attempt to break through and flee the scene.

Yet the Directorate was well prepared for such a reality, and thus the pikes thrust into the gaps in the enemy’s armor, piercing the limbs and bodies of the West Saxons and spilling their blood and potential earnings onto the field.

This chaotic scene of absolute market correction showed itself throughout the four regions that harbored the West Saxon units.

No man could escape the encirclement that the Directorate had captured them in.

As for the Archers, they were quickly picked off by the Sharpshooters who stayed in the distance of over five hundred yards and expertly shot their foes with their scoped crossbows, piercing through the leather and padding of the West Saxon archers.

With this assault, the Directorate had single-handedly brought down the threat that loomed over their supply chain for the past few days, one that had slowed their advance.

The course of the war for Nottingham had shifted in a matter of hours, and those who were fortunate enough to survive the carnage found themselves captured and "onboarded" for interrogation.

With the insurgency crushed and his supply lines secured, Ragnar could once more swiftly march onto Nottingham and meet the main West Saxon force preparing for his eventual arrival.

The war for the County of Nottingham would be decided in a large-scale battle between roughly 20,000 Directorate contractors and 5,000 West Saxon defenders.

Ragnar was sure that the conflict would be a one-sided restructuring.

Ragnar’s army was already of considerable size for the era, far more than a mere Director like himself should have.

On the other hand, King Aethelwulf had paid a significant expense in raising such a large army of his own to march on the Midlands; it had a fair amount of levies, mercenaries, and huscarls among its ranks.

In total, the West Saxons had roughly 50,000 men in the region at the start of the conflict.

With Ragnar’s and Bjorn’s multiple victories, both at the border conflicts and in their ongoing hostile takeovers, the West Saxons now had less than half of that remaining.

Nottingham was considered an area of critical economic importance, and thus King Aethelwulf had invested a fair amount of troops into the region; most of them were now either dead or awaiting processing in the POW camps.

Thus the Battle of Nottingham was a fight that Ragnar was greatly anticipating.

For if he could display his overwhelming might in Nottingham, it might intimidate the future West Saxon armies to accept the merger at the sight of his forces.

At least he hoped for such an outcome, though he recognized the possibility of such a thing was slim.

Nevertheless, he intended to wipe the floor with the West Saxon army waiting for him at his destination.